Crab cakes

Tonight I realized what "crabs" are. Every day on the beach we walk over dead things, and they are always swarming with little crab-like critters. Little ones.
The puggies often step right through the swarm. Isabella likes to back up to anything dead, raise one back leg, lower her pudendum, and pee.
Apparently these critters prefer to munch on their deceased prey than tackle anything with a still beating heart- and thereby hangs my theory that on "public beaches" which are groomed, i.e., from which decaying matter is removed, the "crabs" are ravenous for sustenance and will eagerly snatch hold of anything meaty, whether human, canine, or otherwise.
The only time I have ever had crabs was after "dating" a very cute bartender who I met in San Jose. He invited me to visit him at his home in Santa Cruz over the weekend. Fun! It was to be my first "romantic weekend out of town" since moving to San Francisco.
His apartment was cozy, and near the beach. He had very little furniture: he explained that he was renovating the place, even though it was only a rental.
We fooled around on his bed, which was a mattress on the floor. After a tender post-coital cuddle, I excused myself to use the bathroom.
Imagine my shock to discover that there were no fixtures! He was remodeling the bathroom, too!
"Where do I take my business?" I asked.
He explained that if I was careful I could just aim for the hole in the floor, but otherwise I could use the public beach restroom, which was "only two blocks away."
I made some excuse to leave, and my new crabs and I left for home.

Another crabby encounter was with Tom McVitty, an early blond hotty who had a penchant for banging coke and getting banged by cock...I picked him up hitchhiking at Bonny Doon beach, near Santa Cruz. He had very fine, blonde hair on his chest but a full set of pubes, and they were absolutely swarming. I fetched him a bottle of Rid from the nearest Walgreen's, and the bottom of the tub was coated with crab corpses when he was done.

What have we learned from all this nonsense?

Well, don't lay down on the beach unless there are plenty of dead things around to feed the local crab population, and when you come to visit we will have to comb through your chest hairs after each beach adventure to make sure that you are not harboring any tiny bioterrorists.

Adventure...with naughty bits

So he's the most sexually adventurous man I've ever met.He's strong, and sexy, and handsome, and virile, and hard, and insatiable. He has the strongest sex drive of anyone I've ever known, and we seemed to surprise each other with the extent to which we were willing to go to wear each other to a sex satiated frazzle.
Then he peed on me.
No big deal. It was his idea. I was kneeling in the shower and there were tiles all around and the water was flowing. He loved that.

Any and every time that I approached him, day or night, to my delight, the pants came off.

After breakast Sunday, he left me in a sweaty cum-drenched heap. Later he mocked me, gently, with, "You're not going to leave me here like this, are you?"
"It's not like you were tied up or anything!!" he said.
Hmph. No, it really wasn't like that at all.

Sunday afternoon I drove him up the hill to show him the view up and down the coast. He tentatively stroked his cock through his shorts. Suddenly he unzipped his fly, reached into his shorts, and brought out his hardening cock. Stroking himself to climax, he exclaimed, "I love this view!"Had he put that sock into the door pocket just for this occasion? I thought that demonstrated exquisite forethought.

They had this huge advantage. They weren't crushed by steel.

That's something you could use to give the story a more positive spin, right?
This is the sort of horrible story in which the DA's office researches the last invoice paid on bridge maintenance. Follow the money, and it will lead you right down into the river.The Mississippi river is at its lowest in tens of thousands of years, and Oxfordshire is flooding more severely than any previously recorded season. It sounds as if earth movements unforseen during the engineering of the bridge possibly combined with years of neglect to bring about this collapse.

The fact that the bridge was constructed with the steel beneath the road surface kept it hidden from most passersby, driving over it many times daily. "Out of sight, out of mind."

Favorite Cocktail Piano Scenarios

tonight I discovered a terrific site, "The Cocktail Piano" "http://www.cocktailpiano.com/index.html" and it's as weird as it is wonderful.

Give it a listen, and buy, buy, buy! Support the Art of the Cocktail Piano!

Connie Crosses Over

Connie is in France this week. She turned 50 on Sunday, and said that she was looking forward to being in Paris "on his own" on that very special day.

She was packing for at least three months before leaving for this trip. When I met her for dinner the night before she left, she showed me around her new digs as we stepped around piles of clothes...pretty much as it was in his Concord house, only darker. He has a ground floor apartment, with a private, gated entrance (I believe they're known in the ghetto as "bar doors" because they are made of iron bars...clever, eh?) His bedroom window looks out directly to the sidewalk, and the only chance for direct light in the place.

He slyly let me know that he plans to explore his sexuality while he's in Paris, and he's been studying up on "dirty French" as well as collecting advice on different "scene" places to try. I guess he noticed my disdain, or assumed it, when I suggested that there are a great many things to do in Paris that don't involve having sex.

"You take the easy way out," he said. "With Jeremy and all of that."

I remember a year or two ago I hosted a dinner party. Matthew, Mike, and Connie were here, and Mike was excited to tell us about all the "super hot" men he had had sex with in Brazil. He described how he would instruct his cab driver to go slowly through a certain part of town, and when he saw someone he liked he would have the driver take the cab to the curb. He'd then roll down the window, and the Brazilian boy would come forward and pull out his wares for closer inspection.

"They'd let you do anything for, like, $2US!" he exclaimed.

"Oh my god, and they're dripping with venereal disease!" I shrieked, which I guess didn't make a friend of mine in Mike Finn. Connie, however, concurred that they are "filthy" and was most visibly disgusted by the whole idea of purveying flesh in the slums of Rio.

So is it more chic to be prowling for anonymous sexual partners, oh, pardon, "liaisons" in Olde Europe than in the New World?

Apparently so.

Golden Girls

Matthew joined me tonight for dinner and the show. He kept mentioning how well he knows Justin, and they've been such close friends for so many years, and Matthew knew him back when they were performing "South of Market" all those long years ago. I reminded Matthew that he STILL performs South of Market...and just North of South Van Ness. He didn't want to say "hello" after the show, and high-tailed it home for a night of frantic smoking and packing before boarding a 6am flight to Seattle where he and his cohorts are doing a hit-and-run with a couple of "Golden Girls" episodes in drag. Heklina is quite the producer, having created "Trannyshack" ten or twelve years ago he continues to put together a monthly revue, and licenses the rights to produce "Trannyshack" events internationally.

In the true spirit of the thespian artistry, he sells the tickets for cheap and jacks up the prices on the two drinks minimum. Oh, and these are the "must-see" sold-out shows of the season. Really. I had to apologize for not making it to Theater Rhino to see him perform as a marine in Iraq, and it really was a shame because the experience really taught Matthew a new way to look at the war. (I didn't mention that "enthusiasm and energy" aren't necessarily terms that are used with the intention of meaning "good theater."

Matthew shared a horrific tale of a near brush with death experience he had while performing a "Golden Girls" episode at the home of Mike Finn, former circus performer and cat sitter whose favorite cat-sitting clients left him their cat, and their Victorian home in their will. Well, they were doing this without any sort of permit, four nights only (sold out!) and raking in the bills selling shots of hooch. Saturday night they had so many oversold seats, they pushed the audience forward into the space that had been considered downstage. Matthew had to step over legs and feet in the dark as he took his place in a straightbacked kitchen chair, when he heard a nearby crashing of glass. The lights came up to reveal Matthew in a pink peignoir, the large plate glass window directly behind his head in large, grizzly shards.

Being the professional that he is, he didn't turn around to look. He barely acknowledged the audience's gasps, but when it came time for his character to turn to the window and comment on how much she enjoys the rain he cleverly said that she enjoys "looking at the rain through the broken window."

It. just.doesn't.get.any.better.

Dead Zone Frogs

To live in a wooded area in California is to be aware of the elements of fire danger. Trees are tinder, grasses tender. We are advised that we should maintain a cleared 100' "safety zone" around our properties, to prevent the spread of flames from foliage to structure. We cut down the trees, then, and mow the grasses, to abate the fire hazard, until...voila.

We should implement a forestry study at Irish Beach, in which a map is made of the area indicating the location, size, age, and species of every acknowledgeable spec of flora. From such a plan could be determined the relative nature of each growth, whether benign, melignant, or benevolent.

The scenic pond is brimming with life: singing frogs, crickets, insects, bats, birds of prey, bears, and mountain lions. An abundant insect population is sufficient to support a proportionate number of bats. If humans were to suddenly eradicate the bat population, there would be a sudden surge in the numbers of insects looking for a meal.

Tonight we also learned the value of "sachet" in repeling insects. It appears that the buggers can't smell how tasty you are under your lavender halo.

I can easily imagine the insects eating us alive...